Going Full Speed

South Florida boys could join organized football programs at the age of six, and Sean wanted to play. Pete started tossing the football around with Sean when he first learned to walk in the backyard. But in 1989, when he was six years old, pinning Sean down was hard because he moved around so much.

At his first opportunity Sean began playing Pop Warner football for the Dick Conley League located at Harris Field in Homestead. As a tyke, Sean was in pads and helmet for the first time. To say he was hyperaggressive on the field would be an understatement. He could run, he could hit, and he was taller and lankier than all the other kids.

Pete remembers Pee Wee Sean this way: “On the field, he did something called a wild hit, or what I called an ‘I don’t give a damn hit.’” Here’s another one. “He did an ‘I don’t care what happens to me, but I’m gonna level you’ hit because ‘I am going to be okay; you’re not.’

“It wasn’t a classic solid hit. He’d just run over you. I used to tell him, ‘You have to wrap him up and finish.’ But he didn’t care. He thought he’d just knock them down and maybe if they were lucky they’d get up. And I was like, ‘Wow. This kid is crazy!’”

One day Sean asked his dad what a helmet-to-helmet hit was. Pete was stunned. “I said, ‘Sean, would you mind repeating yourself?’

“Sean asked again, ‘What does “helmet-to-helmet hit” mean?’”

Pete had been coaching other people’s kids for a long time, so when Sean asked him that question, he was floored. “I thought he was just out there to have fun. But actually, I freaked out. My first thought was, ‘This boy is going to hurt himself or someone else.’

“Sean said, ‘Dad, someone told me that when I hit a guy, hit helmet to helmet.’

“I responded with, ‘Ooookay.’ It was at that moment I decided to get back into coaching him—soon—so I could teach this kid and his team the right way. Someone gave him some very bad information, and it could cause him serious injury. I didn’t want that to happen.”

Even Josie remembered Sean as being aggressive in football. “I remember him, when he first started playing Pee Wee football at six years old, tackling two kids at the same time. I just thought it was cute. I didn’t think, ‘Well, he’s going somewhere with this.’ I didn’t think, ‘Wow, this kid is awesome. He can tackle two kids at once.’”

She also never imagined that Sean would one day play football for the Miami Hurricanes or the NFL’s Washington Redskins!

Pete remembered that first season. “Sean’s team made the six-year-old playoffs, and they lost! If you know anything about Sean, you know he doesn’t like losing. So even at six, when his team lost a game, the boy walked around with a chip on his shoulder and didn’t want to speak to anyone for about a day or two. Then he’d come out of it. I always told him to give it everything he had, but win or lose, you have to still have fun.”

Sean’s Friend and NFL Star Antrel Rolle

Antrel Rocelious Rolle was born and raised in Homestead, Florida. He went to South Dade High School there and, like Sean, years later went on to play at the University of Miami. He was drafted eighth in the first round by the Arizona Cardinals in 2005, the year after Sean was drafted. His first pro jersey number was 21, which was Sean Taylor’s last jersey number. At the time of this writing, Antrel was thirty-one years old, the same age Sean would have been had he lived.

Even Antrel, the nine-year NFL veteran currently with the New York Football Giants, who played with Sean on his six-year-old team, saw the intensity of Sean’s play early on.

“As youngsters we had a drill called the Oklahoma, which started on our backs. We would turn over and just collide full speed into each other. When we hit, it was like lightning struck. Two little guys coming at each other full force, and we definitely made a ruckus. So after we hit each other, we were on our backs and we both laid there for a while looking at each other, and it was like, damn! [You hit hard!] And that was our introduction to football.